Puss in Boots
Told by Charles PerraultFranceTale type ATU 545B
- Age
- 5 to 10
- Reading time
- 9 minutes
- Scariness
- 2 of 5A villain, never frightening on the page
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The story
A miller died and left everything he had to his three sons.
The eldest got the mill. The second got the donkey. The youngest got the cat.
There was no fourth thing. The youngest son stood in the yard with the cat under one arm. His brothers could go into business together. He had an animal that slept eleven hours a day.
"I shall eat you," he said, "and make mittens out of what is left."
"You could," said the cat.
The young man sat down on the step.
"Or," said the cat, "you could get me a bag, and a pair of boots."
He did not say why a cat would want boots. He never said, then or afterwards. The young man had no other ideas, so he found a bag and got the boots from a cobbler who had owed his father a favour for years. The cat put them on, tried them on the cobbles, and walked up the lane without saying where he was going.
He went to the warren, put bran and lettuce in the bag, lay down beside it with his eyes shut, and waited. A young rabbit that had not been alive long enough to know better climbed in. The cat pulled the strings.
He carried it to the palace and asked to see the king.
"A gift," he said, "from my master, the Marquis de Carabas."
The king had never heard of the Marquis de Carabas. He said he was very much obliged.
After that there were partridges. Then more, for three months, and every time the cat said the same sentence in the same tone, and every time the king thanked him and privately decided he ought to meet this man.
The miller's son knew nothing about any of it. He had a title now. Nobody had mentioned it to him.
One morning the cat came home and gave his first instruction.
"Go down to the river," he said. "Get in at the place I show you. Say nothing at all."
"Why?"
"Get in at the place I show you."
So the young man stood in the river up to his chest, wondering how long this was meant to go on, and the king's carriage came along the road, exactly as the cat had known it would. His clothes were under a stone where he would not find them.
Then the cat began to shout.
"Help. Help. My lord the Marquis de Carabas is drowning."
The king put his head out of the window. He recognised the cat, and he recognised the sentence. Footmen went into the water and hauled out a bewildered young man who was not drowning, while the cat explained that robbers had taken his master's clothes.
There were no robbers. The cat mentioned them the way other people mention the weather.
The king sent home for one of his own suits and the miller's son put it on. He was a good-looking young man in a very good suit, and the princess, who was in the carriage, looked at him twice. The second time she did not look away. He was invited in.
So he sat in a royal carriage in a borrowed suit, being called a marquis, and still nobody had told him anything. He decided to agree with whatever was said next. It worked perfectly.
The princess watched him agree with her father four times.
"Nobody has told you anything either, have they," she said.
"No," he said.
She looked out of the window for a while. "Good," she said.
The cat had gone on ahead.
He came to a meadow where men were mowing.
"Good people," he said. "The king is coming. When he asks whose meadow this is, you will say it belongs to the Marquis de Carabas. If you say anything else you will be chopped as fine as mincemeat."
They looked at him. He was a small animal in boots and there were nine of them with scythes. They told the king it belonged to the Marquis de Carabas. Nobody has ever explained why.
He did the same at the cornfield and the pasture past the bridge. By the time the carriage had gone three miles the king had been told four times that he was driving through the lands of a man he had met that morning, and had begun to feel he was not keeping up.
At the end of the road there was a castle, and the castle belonged to an ogre.
The ogre owned every field the cat had been pointing at. He was enormous and rich and pleased with himself and had not had a visitor in eleven years. The cat knocked and said he could not pass such a house without paying his respects, and the ogre received him as civilly as an ogre can, which is not very, and gave him the good chair.
"They tell me," said the cat, "that you can turn into any animal you like. I said I did not believe it."
"Lion," said the ogre.
He was a lion. The cat went up the curtains and out onto the roof and stayed there some time, because boots are no good on tiles, and when he came down he was extremely polite.
"Very fine," he said. "Of course, a lion is the easy one. You are large already."
The ogre said he could do small things too. Any small thing. Name one.
"A mouse," said the cat.
The ogre said a mouse was beneath him.
"Yes," said the cat.
So the ogre turned into a mouse, and the cat put one boot on his tail. There was a short conversation. The ogre agreed to several things very quickly. Then the cat lifted the boot, and the mouse went out under the door and did not come back, and the castle stood there with nobody in it.
The carriage arrived twenty minutes later. The cat came out onto the drawbridge and bowed.
"Welcome," he said, "to the castle of the Marquis de Carabas."
The miller's son got down and looked up at his castle. He said nothing. He had become very good at that.
There was a dinner already laid, because the ogre had been expecting friends. The king had a great deal of wine and said twice that the marquis was a remarkable young man. The princess agreed. They were married before the end of the month.
The cat was made a lord. He was given a household, an income, and a room over the courtyard, and he never chased another mouse except when he felt like it.
He never told his master what he had done. His master never asked. In the evenings the two of them sat by the fire, one in each chair, and neither of them said anything about mills, or donkeys, or mittens.
What is the moral of Puss in Boots?
Being clever is not the same as being good.
Most fairy tales reward the person who deserves it. This one does not, and it knows. The cat lies to a king, frightens a field of working men and takes a house that was not his, and the story ends by making him a lord. Iona and Peter Opie pointed out that the hero here barely deserves his good fortune. It is worth reading children one story where the clever one simply wins, and letting them decide for themselves whether that is fair.
Talk about it
- The cat never tells his master what he is doing. Why do you think he keeps it to himself?
- A field of grown men with scythes agree to lie for a cat in boots. What would you have said to him?
- The ogre is only caught out because he wants to show off. Have you ever done something just to prove that you could?
- The miller's son ends up with a castle and a wife without making a single decision. Did he earn any of it?
- Should the cat have been punished at the end? There is no right answer to this one.
Who is in the story
The Cat
protagonist · cat
The worst third of a very small inheritance. He asks for a bag and a pair of boots, and turns them into a castle in under four months without once explaining himself.
- Kind
- 4 out of 10
- Brave
- 7 out of 10
- Clever
- 10 out of 10
- Honest
- 1 out of 10
- Curious
- 8 out of 10
- Patient
- 9 out of 10
The Ogre
antagonist · ogre
The rightful owner of every field and the castle at the end of the road. Enormous, rich, extremely proud of one party trick, and about to be asked whether he can do a small one.
- Kind
- 3 out of 10
- Brave
- 6 out of 10
- Clever
- 2 out of 10
- Honest
- 7 out of 10
- Curious
- 5 out of 10
- Patient
- 3 out of 10
The King
supporting · human
A pleasant, well fed monarch who is given three months of free game by a cat and never once asks who is actually sending it.
- Kind
- 8 out of 10
- Brave
- 4 out of 10
- Clever
- 3 out of 10
- Honest
- 8 out of 10
- Curious
- 2 out of 10
- Patient
- 5 out of 10
The Miller's Son
hero · human
The youngest of three. He inherits a cat, is renamed without being consulted, and spends the rest of the story being moved from place to place by an animal who tells him nothing.
- Kind
- 8 out of 10
- Brave
- 4 out of 10
- Clever
- 4 out of 10
- Honest
- 6 out of 10
- Curious
- 6 out of 10
- Patient
- 9 out of 10
The Princess
supporting · human
She watches a stranger get hauled out of a river in somebody else's suit and decides, more or less on the spot, that this is the one. She turns out to be right, for reasons nobody in the carriage understands.
- Kind
- 7 out of 10
- Brave
- 6 out of 10
- Clever
- 8 out of 10
- Honest
- 8 out of 10
- Curious
- 9 out of 10
- Patient
- 4 out of 10
In a nutshell
A miller leaves his youngest son a cat. The cat asks for a bag and a pair of boots, invents a nobleman called the Marquis de Carabas, and spends three months lying to a king on his master's behalf. There is a river, a field of frightened mowers, and an ogre who should never have taken the bait.
Scene by scene
20 moments from the tale.
- Scene 1The Mill Yardflat
There was no fourth thing
The miller dies and the estate is settled in a single line. The mill, the donkey, the cat. The youngest son is left standing in the yard holding the third item, and there is nothing else to hand out.
Three sons. Three things. One of them sleeps eleven hours a day.
- Scene 2The Mill Yarddry
Mittens
The young man does the arithmetic on his inheritance and announces the result. He will eat the cat and make mittens out of the remainder. The cat considers the proposal and agrees that it is available to him.
He works out what a cat is worth and says it aloud.
- Scene 3The Mill Yarddeadpan
A bag, and a pair of boots
The cat names his price from a seated position. A bag and a pair of boots, nothing further, and no account of what either is for. The young man has no better plan available and goes to find both.
The terms are simple. The reason is never given.
- Scene 4The Mill Yardbrisk
Boots on the cobbles
A cobbler who had owed the dead miller a favour for years hands over a small pair of boots. The cat puts them on, walks a few steps on the yard cobbles to test them, and goes up the lane without telling anyone where he is going.
He tested them on the stones and left. No address.
- Scene 5The Mown Meadowpatient
Bran and lettuce
At the warren the cat puts bran and lettuce into the open sack, lies down beside it with his eyes shut, and waits. A young rabbit that has not been alive long enough to know better climbs in. He pulls the strings.
He set the bag, then lay down and pretended to be nothing.
- Scene 6The Mown Meadowceremonious
A gift from my master
The cat presents the rabbit to the king as a gift from the Marquis de Carabas. The king has never heard the name and says he is very much obliged. Partridges follow for three months, always the same sentence in the same tone.
A title invented that morning, delivered with game.
- Scene 7The Mill Yardabrupt
Get in at the place I show you
The cat comes home one morning with an order instead of an explanation. Go down to the river, get in where he shows him, say nothing at all. The young man asks why once, is given the same sentence again, and goes.
The first instruction. There is no second sentence.
- Scene 8The River Crossingwaiting
Up to his chest
The young man stands in the river up to his chest and wonders how long this is meant to go on. His clothes are under a stone where he will not find them, and the king's carriage is on the road at the hour the cat expected.
His clothes are under a stone. He has not been told that either.
- Scene 9The River Crossingurgent
Help. Help.
The cat begins to shout that his lord the Marquis de Carabas is drowning. The king puts his head out of the carriage window. He recognises the cat, and rather more usefully he recognises the sentence.
A cat shouting a title at a passing carriage.
- Scene 10The River Crossingwry
There were no robbers
Footmen wade in and haul out a bewildered young man who was not drowning. The cat explains that robbers have taken his master's clothes. There are no robbers. The king sends home for one of his own suits.
Robbers, mentioned the way other people mention the weather.
- Scene 11The River Crossingstill
She did not look away
The king's own suit arrives and fits. A wet miller's son becomes a well dressed marquis at the side of a road, and the princess, watching from the carriage, looks at him twice. The second time she does not look away. He is invited in.
A very good suit, on a man who owns nothing at all.
- Scene 12The River Crossingcompanionable
Agreeing with the king
In the carriage the young man decides to agree with whatever is said next, and it works perfectly. The princess counts four agreements, works out exactly what she is sitting opposite, puts it to him, and is satisfied with the answer.
Two people in a carriage. Neither has been told anything.
- Scene 13The Mown Meadowflat
Nine men with scythes
The cat reaches the hayfield ahead of the carriage and tells the mowers what to say when the king asks whose meadow this is, with a promise about mincemeat attached. There are nine of them with scythes and one of him.
A small animal in boots issues a threat. It works.
- Scene 14The Mown Meadowbemused
Four times in three miles
The carriage slows at the meadow, then the cornfield, then the pasture past the bridge, and the king asks the same question at each of them. Four times in three miles he is told he is driving through the lands of a man he met that morning.
The king keeps asking. The answer keeps being the same.
- Scene 15The Ogre's Castlecivil
The good chair
The castle at the end of the road belongs to an ogre who owns every field the cat has been pointing at. He is enormous, rich, extremely pleased with himself and out of practice at company. The cat says he could not pass such a house without paying his respects, and is given the good chair.
Eleven years without a visitor, and then exactly one.
- Scene 16The Ogre's Castlecomic
Lion
The cat mentions that he has heard the ogre can turn into any animal he likes, and that he told people he did not believe it. The ogre becomes a lion. The cat goes up the curtains and out onto the roof, because boots are no good on tiles, and comes down extremely polite.
He asked for the big trick first. On purpose.
- Scene 17The Ogre's Castlesly
A mouse
The cat allows that a lion is the easy one, given that the ogre is large to start with. The ogre insists he can do small things too, any small thing, and asks to be given one. The cat gives him a mouse. The ogre says a mouse is beneath him. The cat agrees.
The compliment with the trapdoor built into it.
- Scene 18The Ogre's Castlebrisk
One boot on the tail
The ogre becomes a mouse and the cat puts one boot on his tail. Terms are agreed very quickly. Then the boot comes up, the mouse goes out under the door and does not come back, and the castle stands there with nobody in it.
A short conversation, conducted at floor level.
- Scene 19The Ogre's Castleceremonious
Welcome to the castle of the Marquis de Carabas
The cat comes out onto the drawbridge and bows the carriage in. The miller's son gets down, looks up at his castle and says nothing at all, having become very good at that. Inside there is a dinner already laid, because the ogre had been expecting friends.
The carriage arrives twenty minutes later. The house is ready.
- Scene 20The Ogre's Castlequiet
One in each chair
The wine goes round, the king says twice that the marquis is a remarkable young man, and the wedding happens before the end of the month. The cat is made a lord with a household, an income and a room over the courtyard. In the evenings the two of them sit by the fire.
He never asked. That is the arrangement.
Where it happens
The Mill Yard
outdoor
A working yard behind a small water mill, with a step to sit on and nothing in it worth arguing over.
The Mown Meadow
outdoor
A hayfield halfway through being cut, with nine men in it, all of whom have just been given something to say.
The Ogre's Castle
castle
A very large house belonging to a very large man who has not had a visitor in eleven years, and who is about to have exactly one.
The River Crossing
outdoor
A slow bend in the river where the road comes close to the water, and where a young man stands up to his chest wondering how long this is meant to take.
How they are connected
The CatThe Miller's Sonservant
An animal who does everything and explains nothing, and a young man who stops asking on the first morning and is rewarded with a castle for it.
Three months of free rabbits and one repeated sentence, delivered by a cat in boots to a king who never thinks to check.
A very small visitor and a very large host, in which the small one wins by admiring the large one slightly less than he expected.
The Miller's SonThe Princessromance
She looks at him twice. He agrees with everything anyone says. Somehow this turns out to be the most honest relationship in the story.
Things you might not know
The cat's threat to the harvesters is genuinely alarming in the original French. He tells them that if they do not say the meadow belongs to the Marquis de Carabas, they will all be chopped as fine as mincemeat. Nine men with scythes then do exactly as they are told by a cat in boots.
In Perrault's 1697 text the cat eats the ogre. There is no wrestling and no chase. The ogre turns himself into a mouse to win an argument, and that is the end of him. Our version lets the mouse go out under the door instead, and it is the only real change we made.
The oldest written version is Italian and about a hundred and fifty years older. In Straparola's Costantino Fortunato the cat is really a fairy in disguise, and female, the princess is called Elisetta, there is no ogre at all, and the poor boy ends up king of Bohemia.
Giambattista Basile's 1634 version, Gagliuso, has the bleakest ending in the family. The master promises to bury the cat in a golden coffin, so the cat plays dead to test him, and hears him tell his wife to throw the body out of the window. The cat gets up, says what he thinks of it, and walks out for good.
The boots do nothing. They are no help with rabbits, and the one time they are mentioned again it is to explain that the cat cannot walk on roof tiles in them. Iona and Peter Opie called them a leftover from an older spoken version. Jacques Barchilon and Henry Pettit noted that no story title before Perrault's had ever mentioned a cat wearing boots.
The Marquis de Carabas is traditionally said to have had a real model. Charles Perrault is reported to have based him on the Marquis of the Chateau d'Oiron in western France, a house that still stands, was visited by Henry II and his entire court in 1551, later belonged to a mistress of Louis XIV, and has been a listed historic monument since 1923.
Not everyone was charmed. George Cruikshank, who illustrated Dickens, was appalled that parents let children read it, and described the tale as a succession of successful falsehoods, a clever lesson in lying, and a system of imposture rewarded with the greatest worldly advantages.
Folklorists file this story as tale type ATU 545B, and the helpful animal changes as you travel. It is a fox across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, a monkey in every recorded Philippine version, a rooster in some Hungarian tellings, and in Denmark, Finland and Estonia it is not an animal at all but the spirit of a dead man.
What things stand for
- The boots
- Nobody explains them, including the cat. They are no use for catching rabbits and actively dangerous on roof tiles. What they do is make him a someone instead of a something, and that is the whole trick.
- The bag
- Bran, lettuce and patience. Every grand thing in the story is built on one small con with a rabbit in it.
- The name Marquis de Carabas
- A title made out of nothing, said in a level voice often enough that a king believed it. The story never gives the young man a real name to put beside it.
- The river
- He is told to get into the water and does it without being told why. That is where he stops being a miller's son, and nobody consults him about it.
- The mouse
- The ogre is not beaten by strength or by courage. He is beaten by being asked, politely, whether he could manage something small.
The same story elsewhere
Folk tales are not owned by whoever wrote them down first.
Costantino Fortunato
Italy, collection c. 1550-1553, this tale 1553
The oldest written telling, by Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The cat is a fairy in disguise, and female. The boy is a widow's son from Bohemia rather than a miller's son. The princess is named Elisetta. The castle belongs to a lord who has recently died, so there is no ogre and no shapeshifting at all, and the boy ends up king of Bohemia.
Gagliuso
Italy, 1634
Giambattista Basile's version, in which the poor boy is a beggar. The enrichment runs along similar lines, but the ending is much sharper. Gagliuso promises to bury the cat in a golden coffin, the cat plays dead three days later to test him, and hears him tell his wife to take the body by the paws and throw it out of the window. The cat gets up and leaves.
The Monkey and Juan Pusong Tambi-Tambi
Philippines, recorded 1921
The helper is a monkey, not a cat. Damiana Eugenio noted that the animal is a monkey in every recorded Philippine version. Collected by Dean S. Fansler in Filipino Popular Tales.
A csizmas kandur
Hungary, 19th to 20th century
The Hungarian catalogue allows three different helpers for the same story: a cat, a rooster inherited from the father, or a fox the hero rescues from starvation or from hunters. Across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia the helper is usually a fox, and in Denmark, Finland and Estonia it is the spirit of a dead man.
Where you might already know it from
Most children meet a screen version first. Here is what those changed.
Der gestiefelte Kater
other, Ludwig Tieck, 1797
Turned the tale into a dramatic satire for the stage rather than a story for children, and used it to make fun of the theatre audiences of his own day.
Les Contes de Perrault
book, Gustave Dore, 1862
A large illustrated edition of Perrault published in Paris by Hetzel. Dore's engravings include the cat talking to the farm workers in the fields and his polite visit to the ogre.
Puss in Boots
opera, Cesar Cui, 1913
A short fairy-tale opera for children, composed in 1913 and first performed in Rome in 1915. In recent decades it has become a favourite with opera houses in Germany.
Questions parents ask
- What is the moral of Puss in Boots?
- Being clever is not the same as being good.
- What is Puss in Boots about?
- A miller leaves his youngest son a cat. The cat asks for a bag and a pair of boots, invents a nobleman called the Marquis de Carabas, and spends three months lying to a king on his master's behalf. There is a river, a field of frightened mowers, and an ogre who should never have taken the bait.
- What age is Puss in Boots for?
- Puss in Boots suits ages 5-10.
- How long does Puss in Boots take to read?
- About 9 minutes read aloud.
- Where does Puss in Boots come from?
- Puss in Boots is a traditional tale from France.
Sing it
Every story here has its own song. This one is dry, sly, unhurried, quietly pleased with itself, about 104 beats a minute.
Ask Me No Questions
sly minor key French cafe waltz
There is no recording yet. The words are here so you can sing it yourself.
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